They were among the first to run with the "Tea Party/Palin did it" narrative...

Project, I'm pretty sure speculativeoptimist was referring to this piece of the post from the OP when he use the word "objective" in his reply:

"Objectively, it does appear to me that more politically oriented crime, and perhaps crime in general, is carried out by your so-called democratic
"progressives." Tell me how I'm wrong (or right)."

Let me point out that Michelle Malkin is extreme in her neocon beliefs and is about as far from objective as you can get, therefore, when the OP
claimed objectivity, speculativeoptimist responded with something from the other side. No one in their right mind (pun) would claim that HuffPo is
objective, duh.

Excuse me? I provided an avenue to an illustration of right wing extremism and that is not pertinent to this discussion? So are you saying the right
has no comparative history of violence when compared to the left?
I was merely pointing out that fact in response to the left being "more" prone to violence, which is an utter lie imo.

I thought we were over it, and agreed that both sides share in some responsibility for violence, then you tell me to stop interjecting meaning
as if I was on the offensive. I was replying to the premise vxn.
So can we agree this thread is inaccurate, disingenuous and detrimental?

I thought we were over it, and agreed that both sides share in some responsibility for violence, then you tell me to stop interjecting meaning
as if I was on the offensive. I was replying to the premise vxn.
So can we agree this thread is inaccurate, disingenuous and detrimental?

spec

edit on 12-1-2011 by speculativeoptimist because: (no reason given)

there is no "sharing" responsibility for violence perpetrated in order to further a political/social ideology.

There is nothing "inaccurate, disingenuous and detrimental" about this thread other than your willingness and desire to obfuscate a topic that makes
you uncomfortable.

If you don't like this thread, leave it to the adults who are willing to engage in the free exchange of ideas.

About the SPLC citations, it seemed that most of the citations were aligned with Nazis, Neo-Nazis or with some faction of the aryan brotherhood.

THESE ORGANIZATIONS ARE TECHNICALLY SOCIALIST, OR LEFTIST IN ORIENTATION.

As I have pointed out in other threads, NAZI is an acronym for "National Sozialistische Deutsch Arbeiter-Partei"
That translates into the National Socialists German Workers' Party. The Nazis were, and are, a socialist union. This is fact.

Yep, they called themselves the NAZI party which does indeed translate as you have it above. The thing is, the name they chose for themselves does
not mean that it is a socialist behavior to perpetrate the crimes against humanity that they did. Do you mean to say that anyone who terms themselves
a socialist or receives that label against their will harbors beliefs akin to those of the NAZI's? They could have called themselves The Cute Baby
Animals party but their actions would not have been those of cute baby animals. They perpetrated some of the most horrifying crimes against humanity
this world has ever seen, a fact that would not have changed based on the name they chose for themselves.

So let's entertain for a moment that since the acronym NAZI includes a reference to socialism then all socialisits must be monsters who at any minute
are going to round up certain ethnic groups and exterminate them. Okay then, let's look at the IRA (Irish Republican Army). Since the word
Republican is in there, that must mean that Republicans are engaged in bombings and other terroristic activities against other groups within their own
country. Great! How about the NDFB (National Democratic Front of
Bodoland)? Since the word "Democratic" is in there, we should just assume that anyone who calls themself a Democrat is a Christian who might
at any minute commit terrorist acts within their own country.

The fact is that the NAZI's could have called themselves the CBA party but they would still have committed the atrocities that history charges them
with. How about the American Renaissance group Loughner is rumored to have ties with? Judging from their name, I would assume they are a group of
Americans who might be interested in art and literature from the Renaissance period. Guess what? They're not.

Calling a politician or a certain political group socialists and then equating them with Hitler and/or the NAZI's is treacherous and appalling, plain
and simply.

Thank you for your response. This is the kind of discourse I am looking for, and it is the kind of response that lends itself to exploring the role
violence plays in political and cultural change.

Mark Levin wrote one of the best books I've read about this topic. It's called Liberty vs. Tyranny. The most important thing I learned from
Levin's book is that, if you distill all of the political "-isms" bandied about these days...liberalism, republicanism, communism, fascism,
progressivism etc.,...the single common denominator that qualifies them is the concept of statism - the belief that a centralized government,
or central planners, ore a core elite, should be responsible for the welfare of the populace they govern.

Levin contrasts the statist idea with that of an "ordered liberty", which involves minimal intrusion of an elected group into the lives of
the citizenry as well as the understanding that the elected group exists as subservient to the citizenry that elected it.

There are, of course, different types of statism - liberal statism, eco-statism, financial statists, etc. Each different type believes to a greater
or lesser degree of the needed power of the elite planner core. Also, each one is different in how the populace should be controlled or engineered in
order to achieve the larger ends or the central planners.

For our purposes these days, here within the two-party system we have inherited, I believe that both parties here in the U. S. are statist; however,
the "democrat" statists appear to be much more draconian in the degree to which they wish to control the populace.

This is not to say that the "republican" statists do not wish to exercise control. The question to me is, what is the difference in degree of these
statist factions and the amount of power they want to wrest from the populace.

Levin on liberalism in the United States:

"The liberal vision is, to be even more precise, that the individual needs to be controlled, that his aspirations need to be limited, that he has
to learn to get along and go along. And that if that means dispiriting the individual, if that means economic or other forms or repression, then so be
it for the good of the general society. And that a handful of individuals, self-appointed, who assume power one way or another, they will make the
decisions for all the rest of us. In one form or another, that’s what the statist believes."

In Levin's categorization, a socialist society is malignantly statist, as is a communist and a fascist society. Each is invested in taking something
- money, resources, time, freedom of ideas, etc. - from the populace in order to develop and sustain a larger political ideal. These things are taken
usually by force or the threat of force and, in Levin's taxonomy, the REAL differences between political models only involves the degree to which the
state exercises its will over populace. There is no material difference between fascists and communists, because both involve massive encroachment of
the "central planners" into the lives of the citizens.

My belief is that a political ideology which openly admits that it should have a centralized elite that takes from the populace in order to
redistribute more "fairly" in the betterment of society is a very dangerous ideology. That's why I believe that "socialism" in any form could
conceivably result in what happened with the Nazis and the holocaust. It is also what happened with the communists/stalinists, and with the Maoists,
etc.

In this model, the logical end result of a statist society is outright enslavement of its enemies and detractors, and eventual mass murder of those
that do not fall lock step into allowing the "elite" to do what they will.

Now, with barack obama in office, we have potentially one of the most hard-core statist executive administrations in U. S. history. He has done what
the italian and german fascists did in nationalizing key industries and markets to a degree previously unheard of, and he has perpetuated and further
empowered the patriot act, started by republican statists under G. W. Bush.

-------------------------------------------------

I look forward to debating and discussing these things, and I hope that no one else will become narcissistically wounded by the frank discussion and
"take his ball and run home whining to mommy."

I respect Mark Levin. He is a political scholar without equal. And besides, you gotta love a man who unabashedly loves his dogs. In addition, I very
much appreciate your point of view and the amount of time and thought you have obviously put into developing your political beliefs. I am sad to say
that I am not sure if that is the norm for most people. I have been meaning to read Liberty vs. Tyranny because I think an opinion is not a fully
formed one unless an effort is made to peruse more than just one side of the issues. However, I have the distinct feeling based on your summary of
the book that I will very likely disagree with most of his characterization of liberals.

Literary criticism is one of my "things". In the course of my literature education, both formal and informal, I have learned that one opinion about a
writer or a subject, no matter how well that opinion has been vetted or researched, is just that -- one opinion. I can't tell you how often I have
come across a beautifully researched and elegantly written criticism of an author's work, only to have the author respond with "Uhhh, that's not what
I meant at all." The same can be said about almost all subjects about which there is a body of writings of a critical nature. From the snapshot you
provided of the Levin book, that is itself a work of political criticism, I can tell you, at least for myself as a liberal progressive individual,
that my response to Levin is, "Uhhhh, that's not who I am at all."

I can tell you with absolute passionate certainty that, my liberal Democratic Party has nothing whatsoever to do with the one Levin describes
in the quote you provided. Never in all my 20+ years of being a registered Democrat have I ever met or talked to a single person in my party who
resembles the picture Levin paints of us. That is just not who we are and it literally brings tears to my eyes to think that there are people who
think that of us. I have been to party gatherings and never have I heard anything that would promulgate a philosophy like that. I am not lying or
making up stuff here. The Democratic Party is made up of individual people, just like the Republican Party is. We have all forgotten that fact, and
THAT is what I think has gotten us where we are today in this quagmire of us against them rhetoric. We are all "us." We are all citizens of this
wonderful country that we are so blessed to be a part of. Both sides have great ideas. Why can't we work together in a way that will allow the best
ideas to bubble up to the top and become the movements and/or laws that launch us onto a better path, regardless of who or which side brings them
forth?

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